Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1886 — STUDY AND WORKSHOP. [ARTICLE]

STUDY AND WORKSHOP.

The botanical gardens, London, have succeeded in cultivating the curious kermes oak (quercus cociferaj, which, when punctured by one of the coccus insects, produces the ancient, blood-red dye, supposed to have been used by Moses to tint the hangings of the tabernacle. The kermes oak is a dwarf, bushy' shrub, somewhat resembling a holly, and grows profusely in Spain. M. Lessenxe, at a meeting of the Societe Medicale d’Amiens, indicated a certain sign of death, simple and trustworthy. After pricking the skin with a needle the puncture remains open, just as when a piece of leather is pricked. On the living body, even if the blood dogs not come to the suface, as would happen if the person was hysterical, the pin-prick closes at once, and does not leave the slightest trace. A new style of trundle for moving goods, castings, etc., about a store, shop, or foundry, consists of three balls two and one-half inches in diameter, whose centers are held in. position in the angles of a triangle.. These balls move between two disks that are riveted to an iron plate which connects the whole affair. They yield, readily to the stress exerted upon them, whatever be its direction, since any two of them will pivot around the third. Prof. Stamford, the English Edison, has discovered a new substance which promises to become a popular article of commerce. “Algine,” a residuum of macerated fucas (sea-tang), combines the qualities of a mordant, an esculent, and a superlative adhesive. It fixes a variety of colors used by cotton-dyers. In certain combinations it is as nutritious as grape-sugar, while in one of its forms its adhesiveness exceeds that of gum-arabic not less than twenty-six times. When mounted and swung against the sky the great Lick telescope will have a focus of fifty-five feet lengthnear ly fifteen feet longer than the largest one ever before made. It will be a refractor, which means that the image is formed directly to the eye by the object-glass, as contradistinguished from the Gregorian and Herschelian telescopes. The largest instrument ever known of the latter style was Dr. Herschel’s. The tube lacked but eight inches of being forty feet in length. A test for the quality of leather, especially that used for belting, isgiven in the Revue Industrielte. A small piece is immersed in good acetic acid vinegar; if the leather has been perfectly tanned, and is, therefore, of good quality, it will remain immersed in the vinegar, even for several months, without any other change than becoming of a little darker color. If, on the contrary, it is not well impregnated with tannin the fibers will promptly swell, and, after a short time, become converted into a gelatinous mass. Apropos of the Suez Canal, it has. been recently recalled that Herodotus relates that when Nero, the king of Egypt, undertook the work of uniting the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas by means of a canal, 620,000 men perished in the work. He then, caused the work to be stopped and consulted an oracle, receiving the reply: “A barbarian will finish thy work.” Ai friend of the famous Frenchman copied upon a sheet of paper the paragraph, from Herodotus and carried it to De Lesseps, who, having read it, took his pen and appended: “The barbarian prophesied by the oracle—F. De Lesseps.” Three years after date the floating islands of pumice, thrown up and into the sea by the stupendous volcaniceruption at Krakatoa, in the Java seas, are found to have drifted along the Indian Ocean, in the last twelve months, 676 miles in a direction west by south from where they were one year ago, or about five miles a day. This accidental help to hydrographers and all who. study ocean currents and drift is probably the best they have ever had, because the origin of the pumice is well known, the floating expanse of it solarge that it cannot escape notice, and the dates and other particulars about it are all matters of record.